WYSI*not*WYG project

"it all begun when I realized that our perception of objective reality was conditionned by what we have learnt and experienced since our early childhood.
Elementary characteristics of an object, a tree, a car, undergo a series of complex transformations, involving our senses, before we clearly and consciously identify them.
In the end, we had been diverted from our true ability at observing everyday things, so that today we don’t even bother looking at them.
When I realized this, I was in the woods, staring at a tree which looked familiar before and had become that day so different to me.
This tree stood in front of me as it was, with its physcial and geometric features,
untied from any referent, as if I was looking at it for the first time in my life.

Development
I grew this ability of observation when I was a child. I used to shape my own perception of the world while I was discovering it. A waterfall or a moving car lights could appear to me in two
different ways, according to how I would look at them. They would appear sometimes still when I was following with my eyes their frantic run through space, and other times blurred when I was
trying to stare at one point on their path.
Other childhood key moments (such as perception exercices or 3D constructions) have been deciding in developping my own perception of things, to then change it forever.
I carried on these experiments with visual exercises until I went to art school, where I learnt to look at objects no longer as contents but as containers. Various trips I did abroad, where I
always kept a critical eye on surrounding elements, refined this outlook.
This view, which grew slowly, remodelled my everyday life while creating feelings I would inevitably look for to retranscribe and share through my artistic activities.

A visual language
I started my own experiments with both a photo and video camera so I could use real images to be modified through visual effects.
Working out a visual language, based on the alteration of real images, was leading me to break with their original aspects and then blur their perception.
I thought this would trigger off an impression, an emotion, which would question any reference to everyday life, in order to share with the audience a different point of view.
After several attempts, my researches did not fit the aimed target. I was stuck into a merely plastic approach which would give my works more of a decorative appearance rather than
informative.
It feels like I had to go through this dead-end to think about a radically different approach.
However, if first I was inspired by the Impressionists work from the beginning of the 20th century, the new lead I took, at the beginning of this 21st century, drew its inspiration from the works
of great physicians such as Einstein, Niels Bohr or Heinz Dieter Zeh.

It from bit
From there, I led my research considering unbiased reality, time, space and matter as notions of intangible information.
Einstein’s work on « restreint relativity », Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg’s researches on the « edification of quantic mechanics », as well as « quantic
decoherence » introduced by Heinz Dieter Zeh, research related to computer simulations by Nick Bostrom have remarkably influenced my way of looking at and thinking the world.
The idea came to me that in order to share with the audience a different point of view, I needed to create a ceisure in what came from tangible reality.
In other words, being able to modify the type of information received by the observer and transmitted by the observed object.
According to this new approach, if taking photos is like taking a sample in the shape of a picture, the ceisure effect will take place on this image, conveying the information to a
receiver.
A significant and disturbing ceisure but well thought-of, in order that the receiver cannot entirely decode the information, but without denying them the possibilty to reconstruct the image,
through their own life experience.

Deconstruction
Working on my second lead, inspired by theories of physical science about « relativity of information », and fitting better my artistic targets, I realized that the key concept of my
work would be the « de-construction of space-and-time landmarks ».
This concept follows an approach which, however computerized it is, is so simplistic that I could do it manually.
The idea is to fragment a urban landscape to then reshape it, without doing any colorimetrics alterations, in order to avoid the decorative side and to always maintain a link with the original
landscape.

The deconstruction or fragmentation of urban landscapes images, acts mainly as an emotion trigger, which does not aim at showing what things could be, but more at questionning their
references.
We could then ask ourselves, what is the information transmitted by the elements we feel worth ? Could they be shown in a different way ? In that sense, is what we see what we think we
see ?
To seem rather than be !
To suggest rather than show !

Works and pieces on this site do not give an answer or a solution to the « problematics of the relativity of information », but rather suggest leads for thought and allow the audience
to experiment urban landscape according to their own sensitivity.
My aim is not to re-present the world as it is, but rather to suggest a new angle for observation and consideration.

Anarchitecture series

he project Anarchitecture breaks down and offers a new version of reality for our day-to-day urban environment. Using fragmented images and contrasting parts, Olivier Ratsi remakes our urban
landscape through digitally-processed photos.

This project considers objective reality, space and material as intangible concepts of information. With the help of photographic decomposition, Ratsi has created a split in this objective
reality (that of large urban settings), thereby altering our perception of what is real.

These architectures of daily life seem both strange and familiar, near and yet far away.

By forcing people to question their ability to piece together what the artist has split apart, Olivier Ratsi provokes interactivity between the work of art and spectators, based on a mental
exercise in visual reconstruction.

Space Ana series

pace Ana is an ongoing project of audiovisual performances drawn from Anarchitecture project. Projected and staged
in situ on buildings on a macroscopic scale, Space Ana performances suggest another way to look at
architecture through a set of synchronized visual alterations. The idea is to provide the audience with
a new field of experience, a different way of considering time and space.